On Mar 4, 2008, at 3:43 PM, =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Kent_Rasmussen?= wrote:

> On another matter, Jerry suggests that Norman Rockwell was the only 
> artist
> to depict the whitewashed fence accurately. I’m not sure this is 
> correct.
> Aside from the fact that Rockwell’s illustration doesn’t match the 
> book’s
> description of a fence nine feet high and thirty yards long (of course,
> Henry Sweets has argued that those dimensions existed only in Tom’s
> imagination), other illustrators (including Donald McKay) have 
> depicted the
> fence with vertical boards.


The claim that Rockwell was the only illustrator to visit Hannibal was 
a mistake, if I wrote it that way.  Rockwell claimed in his book "My 
Adventures as an Illustrator" that he was the first one to visit, I 
believe.  That would have been up until '35, of course.

The illustrator I thought got the fence right was Williams, not 
Rockwell.  To be faithful to Twain's words, the fence would have to be 
made of horizontal boards, not vertical boards as are usually depicted 
(the fence now at Twain's boyhood home has vertical boards).  I'm 
basing that on the Chap. 2 sentence that comes right after the "Thirty 
yards of board fence nine feet high" that you mentioned.  Tom "dipped 
his brush and passed it along the top-most plank".  Now that seems to 
say that there are planks that are on top, and planks that are below 
them.  In order for that to be the case, the boards would have to run 
horizontally, otherwise a plank would run from top to bottom, and could 
not be described as being "top-most".  At least that's the way I read 
it.  True Williams shows the fence around Tom's house in some places as 
having horizontal boards (with space between each row of planks like 
the fence around a Kentucky horse farm), and at other places as being 
the more commonly seen vertical arrangement (as where Tom is shown 
climbing over the fence to escape Aunt Polly).  The fence is not 
depicted as being nine feet high, though, unless Tom was a 7 footer.

I was very interested in your explanation of the Clemens - Twain name 
changes.  I'm sure you're right.  I suppose there was a reason for the 
change something like you described.  In the case of Heritage, I was 
under the impression that they started out using the name Mark Twain 
when the books came out in the 30s, switched to Samuel L. Clemens in 
the mid 40s, and then went back to Mark Twain.  That's only a guess 
(based on the fact that one of my "Clemens" editions has a notice that 
the book followed the law requiring reprints during the war to use less 
paper than the original ....... the book was made smaller by reducing 
the margins, but otherwise is the same).  No printing year is in any of 
these books, although I've seen printing years in other Heritage 
books).  Despite changing the author's name from Twain to Clemens (and 
back?), their introduction never changed, and refers to both Clemens 
(early in his life) and later the name Twain is used.

I believe this book is still in print and is sold at both the Mark 
Twain House and the Boyhood Home (or it was a few years ago).  I don't 
know what author's name is being used now.

Jerry